15 degrees, cloudy/heavy rain
Today we drove about 100 miles to Charleston on the west coast of the South Island. We had no food in the van and there wasn’t a shop in Murchison and we didn’t pass a single store on our journey either.
We got to Charleston for about 12.30pm to see if we could take the 2.00 pm Glow Worm Cave tour. There was space so we booked on and had lunch in the café there. We were to assemble for 1.30 pm for a briefing before departing for the caves. Not the most organised or well-staffed outfit and having been kitted out with a hard had and light, at 2.30pm we finally managed to get on the coach to take us to the railway which took us to the track which led to the cave entrance!
These caves are completely undeveloped – no lighting, pathways or guide ropes – just a guide and the light from our headlamps to show the way. There were 11 in our group and the trip was about 1.5km there and then back again. The caves had stalactites & stalagmites in pretty formations but we had to scramble under some very low ceilings and narrow passes to get the different chambers – you would have loved it Dad!
After about 1.5km we reached the other side of the mountain to a huge entranceway draped in greenery with the light shining through – it looked very romantic in the humid mist – very Lord of the Rings.
Then we went back into the cave system and branched off to the Glow Worm cave and turned out our headlamps. There was an amazing display of light from the glow worms on the ceiling, they produced enough light for us to vaguely see the others in the group. We moved round into another area where there weren’t so many at first, but when we clapped our hands and made a noise the ceiling lit up magically as the glow worms thought the air disturbance was the prey flying past (mozzies and sand flies). It was quite a sight.
Glow worms taken in the dark
When we got back to the entrance it was seriously raining (this being part of a rainforest). Fortunately they had told us this was likely before we left the centre so we had our rain gear with us but were soaked by the time we made it back to the train and then back to the centre at about 6 pm.
Then we found out that there was absolutely nothing in Charleston in terms of shops or restaurants as it only has 78 residents (used to be 17,000 in the 1860s due to the gold rush). So we ended up going back on ourselves to Westport which was the nearest biggish settlement. It was not particularly salubrious! The High Street looked like something out of a wild west movie, all low level, temporary looking buildings, mostly in poor state of repair, with a huge mountain range at the end of the road in the distance. We were recommended a couple of places by the campsite but as it was 8 pm on a Sunday they were closed, so we went into the Cosmopolitan Hotel which claimed to have a restaurant. Took one step inside and rapidly back-peddled out of the door! Ended up in the supermarket 10 minutes before they closed and had steak and jacket spuds for tea.
Everything inside the motorhome is damp due to the wet clothes, towels and the fact that we’d left a sunlight open when we were in the caves and the rain had poured in